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Oh, Brother

George W. Bush owns what he calls a “treasured” picture that depicts him being sworn in as governor of Texas for the first time—the image also shows what he says is his “pensive” brother Jeb in the background. George W. has studied the picture and come to a conclusion about the moody look on Jeb’s face as he stands, in the second row, directly behind their misty-eyed father: Jeb, George W. wrote in his autobiography, is “no doubt thinking of what might have been.”

The picture was taken in 1995, not long after Jeb had lost his own gubernatorial race in Florida. It wasn’t supposed to have ended that way. George W. was “supposed” to lose to the popular incumbent Ann Richards; Jeb was “supposed” to win against Lawton Chiles. And maybe it was supposed to be Jeb Bush being groomed for the presidency.

The metaphor in the picture is glaring. The second son, seven years younger than George W., is literally behind both his father and his brother. The younger brother didn’t just lose Florida—he had lost the chance to bypass George W. on the road to the White House. That day, as Jeb watched his brother being sworn in, Karl Rove, Bush’s political architect, had already begun mapping out the prospects for a Texas-coordinated White House bid in 2000. “It really hurt my parents and it kind of created an uncomfortable situation when I’ve seen George W.,” Jeb admitted in a newspaper interview shortly after his loss.

Life in the House of Bush was bound to be provocative with two brothers vying for power at the same time—and made even more so as they wrestled with their connection to their father’s political legacy. In a conversation I had with Jeb in 1999, while I was researching my book First Son: George W. Bush & The Bush Family Dynasty, I asked him what role his father had played in the lives of his children. “He was just a beacon that simplified life tremendously,” Jeb said.

His brother George W., by marked contrast, has often done little but complicate Jeb’s career. And things may soon grow even more complicated: For the first time in more than 20 years, Jeb is emerging from George W.’s shadow and being seriously talked about as a contender for the Republican nomination for president in 2016. Most of the chatter about his prospects focuses on whether, as a fairly moderate Republican who’s taken heretical stands on immigration and education, he can win over the party base. And if he does run, a thornier issue for Jeb could well be the tense relationship he now has with his older brother’s presidential legacy. As the Atlantic’s Peter Beinart recently put it, “You can’t easily Sister Souljah your own brother.”

It may be the final plot line in a familial tug-of-war that traces back to their days growing up in Texas. Competition was a bit of a blood sport for the four boys and one girl in the Bush household—from the tennis court to the golf course and to the debates about who-was-getting-admitted-to-what-school.

In his formative years in the 1960s, a teenaged Jeb saw his 20-something brother George W. as a hero with a malfunctioning halo. “It wasn’t like he was an angel,” Jeb told me. But he idolized his brother. George W., he said, was someone who could always make him laugh—someone who was “really funny.”

Early on, some thought that Neil, the fourth child, would emerge as the golden one—“Mr. Perfect,” the family called him. But in the end there were two clear, but very distinct, children who would go to the political starting line: The cocky and rambunctious George W., and the slightly more cerebral Jeb.

They were never openly at war with each other, but George W. was clearly louder, more insistent. Fidgety and garrulous, he filled up a room. Jeb wasn’t mute, but he was quieter and not as antsy. Where George W. was a C student who could rattle off baseball statistics for the players on the Houston Astros,Jeb would graduate as a Phi Beta Kappa who could reference history, current affairs and the books he had been reading. A political consultant in Texas once told me that even as a young man Jeb was a bit akin to Al Gore. Almost dutiful in his approach, more of a policy wonk.

Most of all, as he grew into politics, Jeb carried far less baggage than his brothers: George W. lugged nagging questions about his early run-ins with the police in Maine and Connecticut, and the exact nature of his service in the Texas National Guard; Neil was haunted by his connection to the billion-dollar Silverado Savings and Loan scandal.

All of the children, of course, would put their shoulders to the wheel for their father’s political missions. But because George W. was so much older, he was tapped to be his father’s proxy during early campaigns in Texas—and it all simply shoved him more quickly and firmly into the foreground. The sense was that the young George W. was barreling into politics—not because it was a deep, soulful calling, but because it was what the Bushes do. And Jeb? He was different: When he got older and began dabbling in politics in Florida, some family observers told me, he was driven by deliberate choice and a genuine interest in the puzzles of public affairs.

Growing up, they had one thing in common: They were fiercely loyal to their father, and each served in the campaign trenches on behalf of the old man. But they also did it in singular ways that spelled out their personality differences. George W. was the backslapping soldier sent to serve as his father’s surrogate at the grip-and-grin political affairs. He worked the front room and was able to memorize all the names of the donors. Jeb was often in the back rooms or off to the side, talking strategy and mapping out the best ways to finesse public policy positions.

Now, if he goes forward toward 2016, Jeb will be confronting edgy voters and pundits with their own lingering image of George W. Bush—who left office as one of the most unpopular presidents in American history—and who will be predisposed to instantly exile Jeb alongside his brother.

The United States has never had brothers as presidents, and so the questions will be intense and lingering: Will America be getting another George W. Bush if Jeb runs for office? Will he have to publicly disavow his brother’s handling of Hurricane Katrina, Iraq and the economy? Will he drown from guilt by association with the nadirs of his brother’s presidency?

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Family members have always dismissively referred to speculation about this kind of dynastic drama in the House of Bush as “psychobabble”—that the annoying media, in the age of Oprah Winfrey, was always putting public figures on the proverbial couch. Jeb even had a derisive word for it; he told me one day that we lived in the “therapeutic” age of politics.

Bill Minutaglio is author of First Son: George W. Bush & The Bush Family Dynasty and professor of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin.